


Don't Do It For Me

by telekinesiskid



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood, Character Death, POV Second Person, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid/pseuds/telekinesiskid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t like how Connie’s become. You don’t like how Pearl’s become. You don’t like either of them right now, and you don’t like the way they treat you – like you’re the most irreplaceable thing in the world, and yet still someone whose opinion doesn’t matter. </p><p>Basically Sworn to the Sword with an alternate ending (sorry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Do It For Me

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this half-finished fic pretty much since the episode came out and only just finished writing (and then rewriting haha) the ending today so here it is!!!! it's off my conscience now phew
> 
> special thanks to Kiiouex for being best beta <3
> 
> (also I'm really sorry for doing this to Connie - I love her and I love her character and this hurt a lot)

It looked like fun at first. Connie thought it looked like fun. You’d only ever seen her swipe at some seagulls with the bow of her violin, but you believed in her. You knew from the start that she could handle it. She could become a skilful swordsperson if she wanted to. She could fight alongside you and the other Crystal Gems, if she wanted to. Earth is her home too after all.

You tell Pearl and she looks just as ecstatic as you and Connie do. She doesn’t waste a second; she immediately takes you both into an old, half-crumbled arena. You take note of the four diamonds, the three stone statues and the fourth that lies in rubble beneath your feet.

 

You should’ve known a Holo-Pearl was going to come out. You don’t mean to – it’s just a thrill of fear and complete instinct that throws up the bubble around you and Connie. You catch yourself – Connie catches you – and the bubble falls away as you walk backward, laughing it off, but the truth is that deep down you’re still afraid. You still have nightmares to the automated staccato of “ _parry, parry, thrust”_ and you still wake up with tears streaked down your face when you dream of Pearl’s gem, nested into one of your hoodies like an egg.

You trust they’ll be OK. You tell Connie to be careful – there’s no need, she’s always careful, and she’s a hell of lot more careful than you – before you sit yourself a little away from them.

 

It’s so silly, you think. But Pearl takes all of this seriously – it means so much to her – so you try hard to keep a lid on it. Pearl tells Connie to bow to her master and then to her liege, and it’s so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. Connie laughs with you too. She laughs because, just like you, she finds the idea that anyone could refer to you as “ _my liege”_ utterly hilarious. You play up to it; you stick up your nose and put out your hand snootily and you tell her in a faux-regal tone that she has your explicit permission to go.

Pearl calls for her, and she leaves you.

 

There’s not an awful lot for you to do while she trains, while she gets the gist of basic stance and grip. You sit and swing your legs as you open up some apple slices and stab little juice straws into their boxes. You feel a little bit like how you imagine a mom would feel; cheering from the stands, preparing snacks for breaks. Just being there.

 

You watch her fight every day. She was never bad to start with, but she gets noticeably better and better with each passing day. She’s so agile and her reflexes are quick and she moves with a lethal sort of grace that emanates Pearl, but there’s a bit of Connie’s heritage in there too.

You’re in awe of her. You tell her as much every time Pearl allows her a short break to catch her breath and she wanders over to you for a juice box. She gushes at your praise, cheeks flushed from a mix of hard training and humble embarrassment, and she admits that she’s learning so much so quickly. You can tell that she’s happy.

 

She gets hurt. You watch Connie lose focus for just a fraction of a second, and it’s the slash across her cheek that immediately brings her back. She goes on without notice, quick and vicious and deadlier than before, even as you can clearly see a streak of dark red roll down her face from across the arena.

You look to Pearl but she doesn’t stop Connie; she doesn’t call back the Holo-Pearl, not even for just a _second._ She keeps her eyes on Connie and keeps her mouth pursed into that relentless deadpan that rides the fine line between disappointed and just content.

You have to step in. You jump to your feet and spread your arms and declare, _“Stop the training! I’m invoking the blood rule!”_

Pearl doesn’t know what the blood rule is. Of course she doesn’t. She repeats the words, baffled, _“blood rule?”,_ but she makes every blade stop swinging the second you run onto the arena. You run for Connie with the little pack of plasters and the little bottle of antiseptic you keep in the cheese flap of your hamburger bag. She doesn’t realise she’s bleeding until she wipes the back of her hand over her cut and smears it with blood and sweat. She smiles and tells you thank you as you dress up her wound, even as Pearl paces around you both and complains that, in a ‘real’ fight, there _is_ no blood rule. No one just _stops_ in the midst of battle to attend to minor flesh wounds.

You turn to Pearl, annoyed. You remind her that this is not a real fight. This is not a battle. They have time, and she can have some patience.

You’re not so sure you can quite call it patience, but Pearl reluctantly shows something akin to it as you fix Connie up.

You’re shooed away as soon as you’re done, and she jumps straight back into her training.

 

As the days pass, she accumulates more and more wounds, and they start to worry you. Bruises, cuts, blisters. The callouses on her sword hand are the worst. And she doesn’t _tell you_ that they hurt, even when it’s plain as day to you how carefully she avoids using her sword hand to do anything now. You tell her that maybe she ought to take a day off or two, to recover, but she tells you that she doesn’t have time. Pearl is waiting.

You can’t talk her out of it, so you follow her to the arena.

You think there’s no way she’s going to be able to train today. You watch her make the most hesitant face you’ve seen from her all week as she takes up her sword. Immediately she winces and drops it. She looks a little sheepish as she admits to you that, well, maybe it does hurt, a little. You take it as a sign that she’s been training too hard, that she needs to _stop,_ and take a break, and stop practicing with her fake sword at home too.

Pearl takes it as a sign that she’s making good progress.

 

The training sessions just seem to get longer and longer. At first it was just mornings until lunch. Then it was from morning and through lunch. Now she starts in the morning, after a massive breakfast, and she doesn’t leave until her parents expect her home for dinner. Every day she seems to arrive earlier. And she doesn’t leave the arena until she absolutely has to. Until Pearl is satisfied that they’ve done enough for the day.

And she stops taking so many breaks.

You even try serving up different flavours of juice. As if that was the reason why.

 

You notice that Connie doesn’t chuckle with you anymore when Pearl makes her address you. She keeps a straight face. She closes her eyes and bends her knee and bows her head and murmurs, “my liege,” and it almost sends chills up your spine. You wait for her to burst out laughing, because she got you good, because you’re not anyone’s _liege_ ;you’re her equal and her best friend. But she doesn’t break this new character she’s adopted. She’s completely serious.

She rises only when you tell her to and when she looks at you now… you don’t think she sees Steven. She must be seeing someone else. She has to be. It’s the only explanation.

Connie would never look at you like that. She would never put you on a pedestal and only interrupt you to tell you that you’re _wrong_ when you frantically try to insist that you’re not that important. Whatever happened to the Connie who would call you out when you were being a jerk? Whatever happened to the Connie who would laugh with you at the _ridiculousness_ of everything that was happening?

Whatever happened to Connie?

 

Sometimes you just want to hang out and have some jam sessions (the deliciously musical kind) and you want to know what she’sbeen up to lately, that _isn’t_ sword fighting. But it’s like she never wants to do anything with you anymore. She’s antsy, she’s nervous, she flexes her sword hand. Even when she does let you talk her into spending time with you, Pearl always shows up eventually to chastise her for the time she’s wasted on _games_ when she could’ve been training instead.

You think that, surely, Pearl has to be kidding. But Connie actually starts to put her shoes back on, and you feel like someone’s pulled the whole floor out from underneath you.

“It’s not _fair,”_ you shout at Pearl as she gives a terse nod to the warp pad, and Connie bounds after her. You grit your teeth on a whine and hot tears prick at your eyes as you watchConnie hide her face. _“She’s my best friend! I want to spend time with her too!”_

No one listens to you. You throw yourself on your bed and cry into your pillow until you’re too exhausted to move.

 

You’re a distraction. You _were_ a reminder, apparently – the _thing_ worth fighting for, a symbol and not a person – but now you’re just a distraction. You don’t sit still and stay quiet like you’ve been told before. You don’t remain passive. You try to help. You feel like you’re right there in the fight, taking on several Holo-Pearls at a time with Connie, and you yell out. You warn Connie when a Holo-Pearl is upon her, but all you ever seem to do is throw her off. And then Connie gets hurt. And Pearl gets frustrated with you and asks you to leave so that Connie may continue her training in peace. And Connie doesn’t insist that you stay either.

You try to fight with Pearl, but it’s the first time she’s raised her voice at you in a while. You back down.

As you walk for the warp pad, you hear Pearl murmuring. “A portrait of him would probably suffice… You just hold onto that image of him in your head, Connie. He won’t be anywhere near battle when the time comes, so that image is everything.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

You don’t like how Connie’s become. You don’t like how _Pearl’s_ become. You don’t like either of them right now, and you don’t like the way they treat you – like you’re the most irreplaceable thing in the world, and yet still someone whose opinion doesn’t matter. They don’t listen to you. They don’t talk to you.

It only hits you now, like a punch to the gut. Just how lonely you are.

 

She barges into your house before the sun is even up, before you’ve even had breakfast. You barely croak out a meek “hi Connie” from your bed before she rushes over to the warp pad, as if she’s already late. She barely even sees you now. And if she does, it’s not a smile she greets you with. It’s a bow. “My liege.”

You hate that word.

 

You can’t sleep. That’s how you’re up early enough to stop her. You catch her by the arm as she passes you, “Connie, wait,” and she halts so suddenly she jolts back. She turns towards you a hard gaze and a straight-line mouth and you feel happy that she’s even just looking at you. “Connie… Can I just ask, who are you doing this for?”

She furrows her brow at you. Like she’s irritably confused by your question. “I’m doing all this for you, Steven.”

You don’t believe her. You can’t. “Are you doing this for you? I mean, do you like training every day?” She doesn’t answer you, she just stares. But she hasn’t taken off yet; she’s letting you talk, so you continue. “‘Cos, I know you’ve still got a really busy schedule, and I heard school is starting again soon, so… You could always…” You swallow hard but you still feel tears brim up in your eyes. “Just… come hang out with me, for a bit. If you wanted.”

“I haven’t got _time,_ Steven,” she snaps and she lithely dodges around you. You spin around to watch her approach the warp pad. “And I’m _not_ doing this for me – like I said, I’m doing this for _you._ ”

“No, you’re not,” you say. “If you were doing this for me then you wouldn’t train so hard all the time. You would take a break every once in a while and come watch movies with me, and let me make delicious food for you. We’d get to talk and hang out and,” you brush tears out of your eyes, “I’d actually get to _see my friend._ ”

She stops. She looks over her shoulder at you and, though you try to hide it, you still think she can still see you’re crying.

The warp pad activates then and Pearl beams in. She doesn’t act like Pearl anymore; she’s more like an authoritative Holo-Pearl than anything else, the way she scans her environment, lays tired eyes on Connie and you and doesn’t change expression.

She tells Connie to come along but you impulsively yell, _“No!”_

That gets a reaction out of Pearl. It gets her unblinking attention. That’s all you want.

“Steven, what’s- is there a problem?” She comes a little closer and tilts her head at you, concerned. “Are you crying?”

“Yeah, I am,” you admit, running wet fingers over your cheeks. “Because I’m upset.”

“Well, why are you upset?”

“Because no one’s _listening to me!”_ you cry out, much louder than you’d wanted to. You try to keep your voice level, and you fight to keep it from shaking too. “I-I miss you both and, Connie, it’s great that you’re a sword fighter now, but I hate what sword fighting has done to you. You don’t seem like yourself. I don’t see you laugh or smile anymore. And you don’t spend time with me, because _you,” you_ point at Pearl, “won’t let her! You tell her that she needs to be constantly training but that’s just _ridiculous!_ She’s not preparing for battle! She’s not going to fight for me anytime soon so… just… _stop!”_

They let your voice ring true for a while. But only a little while.

“Steven,” Pearl starts, and the tone is all wrong. It’s the tone she uses when she has to remind you that you shouldn’t put metal in the microwave. Like she’s exercising such patience with you, but it’s okay, because how could she expect you to know better. “Connie is training hard so that she can protect _you._ I’m training her to be your knight.”

“I don’t need a knight,” you protest, “I need my friend back!”

“Steven,” Connie murmurs. Her eyes are wide and shocked. “I, I know I’ve been really busy but, I _promise_ you, I’ll-“

“Oh Steven,” Pearl interrupts, walking around Connie to you, “you don’t need _friends,_ you need knights and guardians – people who can fight for you and defend you. I’ve told Connie all about you, and about Rose-“

_Rose?_

“-and how, hah, one day very soon Earth may need our protection once again, and I’ve been preparing Connie for that. You shouldn’t be _friends_ with her; she’s ready to lay her life down for you and your cause, when the time comes.”

She says it so upbeat.

Like it’s a good thing.

You don’t know what to say. Tears overcome you hard and fast, and the thought of your friend _dead_ because of _you_ shoves you over the edge. You sob into your arm and you wail and you feel someone come around you but you try to push them away.

You can’t get the words out. You try to say _“I don’t ever want that”_ but it just comes out a series of whines. Pearl just wraps her arms around you tighter and shushes you gently, patting your hair, leading you back to your bed. She tells you that you’re just tired and need rest.

As she leaves, you hear her snap at Connie that there’s more training to do.

 

When you wake up later, it’s to the distant sounds of yelling.

You sit up. Clouds hang grey and heavy over the shoreline, blocking out the sun. You think it might rain soon. You don’t know how the weather changed so quickly.

You hear the shrill, defensive pierce of Pearl’s voice and it makes you shudder. You hear her, but you can’t see her – you can’t see anyone. You crawl out of bed and drop down the stairs and you call out for the gems but no one answers. That’s when you realise; the voices aren’t coming from inside the house.

The front door batters open when you give it a push, like it wasn’t closed properly. You shiver in the cool breeze that whips around you and the sand in the air, and you think you should’ve gone back for a jacket, but you can hear now the clear distress in the gem’s voices, all three of them at once. You catch Garnet phrases like _“calm down”_ and Pearl phrases like _“what are we going to do”_ and it sets something off in you. They’re in trouble. They need you. You have to find them.

You put your hand on the railing and it comes back sticky. Your hand shakes and your heart pumps quicker because you don’t think it’s paint you’re looking at; you think it’s blood. It smells like blood.

It rubs off onto your jeans but you can’t seem to stop rubbing.

You sprint down the stairs and desperately turn every which way for them. You follow their voices but the wind blowing harsh in your ears makes it hard. You think it’s coming from just behind the house. You spot movement and trail after it, trying to keep calm, trying to prepare for the unexpected like you always do.

“Guys,” you cry out as you draw near and it goes abruptly silent. You don’t know what to make of that. “Guys, what are you doing out here? Are you okay?”

Amethyst jumps out at you, taking you by surprise. Her hair is windswept and her eyes are wild, fearful. “Steven, go back inside,” she tells you, “you have to go back inside, right now.”

“Is it a monster? I can help.”

“ _No,_ Steven, you can’t help this, you have to go back, right now, before-“

“I can _help,”_ you yell at her. “Why doesn’t anybody _listen to me?”_ You know it’s unfair, she’s not the target of your frustrations, but you pour them all out onto her anyway. You’re angry and upset and you feel like you want to brawl. “I’m tired of being side-lined and ignored – I’m useful too! I don’t wanna be protected!” She tries to grapple with you but you push right past her. “I wanna help my _friends!”_

You round a corner and your eyes settle over the sight none of the gems ever wanted you to see.

You see Connie’s too-still body, her blooded abdomen, her dark eyes blown wide and unblinking.

“Steven…” Pearl appears at your periphery. Her voice is shaking almost as hard as you are. “S-Steven, she- she was- I-I mean, she was so _distracted,_ and, well, you know, my Holo-Pearls they, uh, they don’t always know when to p-pull back or-“

You fall on your knees. You press your hand to your face and it still _stinks_ of blood – _her blood –_ and you _shriek_ and immediately you feel three bodies close in around you, blotting out the sky, blocking out the light, shielding you off from her corpse, and you you cry so hard that you think every organ in your body is going to rupture all at once. Everything hurts and you feel sick, sharp, pulsing agony in your gut, where the sword stabbed her, and you’re almost thankful that Garnet lifts you up and hauls you both back to the house. You cling to her and wail like you don’t know how you’re ever going to get through this – you think you would’ve rather died than face the reality that accidents happen and not everybody you love is immortal.

You spend the rest of the day with your arms around Garnet’s neck and you sob well into the night, well past your bedtime. You think a lot of things in cycles, endlessly, without filters.

You think a lot of things about Pearl that you know you can’t ever take back.

 

You don’t see her body again until the funeral. Your dad shells out a little money to buy you a nice black suit. You stare at yourself in the mirror and think about how if Connie was here she’d help you fix up your tie, and you thought you had no more tears left in you but you were definitely wrong about that.

You leave much of the talking to the gems. You want to personally apologise and express your condolences to Dr and Mr Maheswaran but Garnet doesn’t let you, not yet. You think maybe she’s doing you a favour when you hear them scream at the gems for their complete and utter lack of responsibility and care.

The Maheswarans up and leave town a week later.

You don’t blame them.

 

Pearl tries hard to compensate for what she’s done. You know she doesn’t much value human life and talks so dismissively of its brevity and tedium, but she knows that Connie was special and Connie was special to you. She knows you blame her and you know she wants you to talk to her again. She won’t leave you alone. Every day you wake up to the smell of a different breakfast food, and every night you fall asleep to the little plaintive pats she gives your head when she thinks you’re already under.

You want to forgive her. You really do. But you still can’t help but shake the feeling that Connie died in the line of duty, in Pearl’s eyes. No, not even that. That Connie _failed_ her training. That Connie’s fatal accident was proof that she wasn’t good enough to serve and protect her “liege”.

And then you think you don’t ever want to forgive her.


End file.
